VIAREGGIO. In the 1980s he had left a safe place to Piaggio to launch his company, now a leader in the industrial design sector, starting from the basement of his home in Marco Polo. A bit like Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, with the necessary proportions. And perhaps it is not a coincidence that they were both born in 1955 and that the company is called Mac, even if in his case it is the first three letters of his surname. Now they will finally be able to get to know each other and converse, up there in the clouds: he died on Saturday evening Roberto Maccionian architect who opened the Mac Design. He passed away peacefully, suffering from an illness discovered recently. He would have accomplished 69 years old at the end of July. An esteemed and well-known professional in the city – in 2015 he was elected municipal councilor of Mayor Del Ghingaro’s coalition, resigning a year later – Maccioni began his professional adventure in 1978, being hired at Piaggio in Pontedera. In Italy still shaken by the Moro case and the years of lead, the figure of the designer is new and unknown, for the engineers who work there he is a “stylist”, like those who imagine clothes for fashion houses. For a young architect, finding permanent work creating designs for the Pontedera company’s most famous motor vehicles is a dream. But that’s not all: the experience gained in six years leads him to want to try his hand at other projects. Maccioni decides to give up everything and question himself by opening his own company. Not near the large production centers of Milan or Bologna, but in his Viareggio, setting up the office in the garage of his house. It seems like a total gamble. Instead, it’s the beginning of a great story.
Maccioni hires his first employee after reading an advertisement in “Gente motori”, an emanation of the famous weekly. And shortly thereafter he goes to an important vehicle fair in Cologne, where Kawasaki presents a new motorcycle model. Maccioni thinks that the product has some critical issues: he comes forward, is listened to and expresses all his doubts to the managers of the Japanese giant. Within a month he received an invitation to collaborate: Mac Design thus became the first non-Japanese design studio to work with Kawasaki. Over the years, the company has become a consolidated reality in Italy and around the world: it boasts prestigious awards and recognitions and has created a vast range of products, from motorbikes to helmets through to coffee machines – the most famous being the “mokona” Bialetti – and pressure washers. Maccioni, of course, was not just a visionary designer: above all he had raised a beautiful family alongside the company, as his children Marco and Valentina well know, who over time became part of Mac Design with complementary roles. In addition to them, Maccioni leaves behind his wife Rossana Balzi, a teacher, his sister Sandra and his grandchildren of whom he was very fond.
The funeral chapel was set up in his home, in via Vittor Pisani, 37 at Marco Polo. The funeral will be held tomorrow at 3.30 pm at the Don Bosco church. His family, to whom we extend our condolences, also organized a fundraiser in his name for the Italian Cancer Research Association.
